Aspects of the present disclosure relate generally to wireless communications, and more particularly, to techniques for allocating user equipment processing capability between multiple access nodes.
Wireless communication networks are widely deployed to provide various communication services such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, etc. These wireless networks may be multiple-access networks capable of supporting multiple users by sharing the available network resources. Examples of such multiple-access networks include Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) networks, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) networks, Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) networks, Orthogonal FDMA (OFDMA) networks, and Single-Carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) networks.
A wireless communication network may include a number of evolved NodeBs (also referred to as eNodeBs or eNBs) that can support communication for a number of user equipments (UEs). A UE may communicate with an eNodeB via the downlink and uplink. The downlink (or forward link) refers to the communication link from the eNodeB to the UE, and the uplink (or reverse link) refers to the communication link from the UE to the eNodeB.
A UE may, simultaneously, be separately connected to two (or more) access nodes. The access nodes may be eNodeBs and/or wireless local area network (WLAN or Wi-Fi) access points. Operating according to this type of simultaneous, separate connection may be referred to as “dual connectivity” operation or as a “dual connectivity mode” of the UE. Because the UE is connected to two separate access nodes, two separate schedulers (e.g., one scheduler per access node) are allocating radio resources to the single UE. Despite the dual connectivity, the UE only has a certain amount of processing capability. If the access nodes are not aware that the UE is also in communication with another access node, the two (or more) access nodes may perform scheduling that, together, requires processing capabilities that exceed that available at the UE. In view of the foregoing, it can be understood that there may be significant problems and shortcomings associated with current technology when a UE is in dual connectivity mode.
As such, improvements in allocating UE processing capability between multiple access nodes are desired.